There he developed a curriculum which was "extraordinarily broad and demanding, encompassing literature, philology and drama from the thirteenth century to the neoavanguardia".
[5] With "his horn-rimmed spectacles, broken tooth, beard, lank hair, string bag and apple", May stood out as a great eccentric on campus.
[4] Christine McNeil recalled: "'He never stays on topic,' wailed the note takers, as he soared off on a thousand tangents in his soft, sweet voice.
[7] The examination papers he set were long (from 40 to 60 pages in length) and elaborate, featuring cartoons, extracts from ancient drama, the press and poems, and "drawings of buxom ladies in the Norman Lindsay tradition".
[7] By 1969 May was suffering from failing health and began to involve himself in more activities outside the university, including contributing to the 1973 Heresies radio series on the Australian Broadcasting Commission,[8] creating (together with Winsome Evans) a "collation of medieval poetry and music" with the title The Snave May Snitter Full Snart, and reading poetry with The Renaissance Players in the Great Hall of the University of Sydney.
[2] His interpretative essays "emphasising a fusion in Pirandello's work of ancient myth and modern psychology" have influenced subsequent criticism, which previously had been mostly descriptive.